The vast majority of places we are... we are there with the consent of those governments.

But not necessarily with the consent of the people of those countries or locations. Like Okinawa for example. They kinda get sick of their kids being raped by your Marines. But their governments don't mind so go ahead, help yourselves to the Japanese schoolgirls.

Whatever point you were trying to make there, especially that Russians need to stop being assholes, doesn't work when everything you've based it on involves the US being even bigger assholes.

Actually, that's not true. International relations works by allowing everyone to be assholes while pretending that they're awesome.

This is because everyone in political power, in every country in the world, but ESPECIALLY the USA and Russia, are narcissistic personalities. Something that Karmashock was referring to when he said:

Look Russia... If you want to do business with the US, you need to make people like me happy. I know... you don't like that... but that's reality.

to make people like him (or Putin or Obama or any other person who could POSSIBLY become president of either country) happy you have to give them lots of ego-puffing, always give them what they want immediately and never ever criticize them.

A cargo ship has a top speed of under 25MPH (20 knots). A Class 5 freight train can hit 80 MPH and there's no *technical* reason why they couldn't go even faster. Even with the increase in distance by taking the long way around, you can maybe reduce transit time. Such trains could also load and unload deep inland, closer to where the cargo is needed, eliminating multiple handling steps.

I still don't think it's a *good* idea, but it's slightly less crazy than it might initially sound.=Smidge=

How well maintained is the rail network in the USA? Can it actually handle this kind of traffic?

I doubt they would ship goods in trucks, though. I suspect the bridge would include many rail tracks. My understanding is that China has interest in a high speed rail line from northeastern China to Alaska. That said, I thought China was interested in a tunnel rather than a bridge. That might be cheaper.

The occasional labor strike at the west coast ports and the resulting backlog doesn't help either. Alternative routes may be worth the money for the Chinese to get their products to U.S. consumers.

The USA can either give Canada back that coastal strip of British Columbia that was expropriated by the UK and gifted to the USA to pay off war debts OR the US can expect to pay very heavy tolls for use of Canadian roads to transport the goods coming over this bridge. Eh.

There sure has been lots of discrimination based on race. However, there's a difference between discrimination and the institutionalized racism through slavery and Jim Crow laws that have combined for centuries of oppression. Let's say that Kim Jong-Un was dethroned today in North Korea and a democracy was implemented immediately. Do you honestly believe that North Korea would immediately prosper? It would take a long time to recover from the damage done by the dictatorship. While other races and ethnicities have prospered more quickly in the US, they also haven't faced the prolonged severe racism that African-Americans have. You're a troll because you're intentionally leaving out those important facts.